Week 35 - Elder Bednar

Dad on your mission did you give and recieve beijinhos (the kisses
thing)? no i havent been playing any more then just some prelude at
baptisms.  Sister broderick the new senior couple plays the piano so I
will not have too for the rest of my stay here, which could only be
one more week since we have transfers coming up again next monday.

Yeah I have emailed john a little but it has not been to frequent.  He
is doing good but is really in need of an adventure...   problably
because everyone else is out on a mission spread out throughout the
world and he is in mosco.

And wow christina!  PROM AND BOYS!!! what is this!  But you looked really nice.

that is awesome about the temple.  I am super jealous. we had a casal
that are recent converts that we work with a lot go and get sealed and
endowed this week.  Fernando and Vera Moquinho which was really cool
but really makes me miss the temple.  sometimes I just do temple
studies so that I can feel that familiar spirit.

Also mom just know that your three pies definatly made it into the
letters home for those missionaries too.  and I would take those three
pies over the feast that we had any day without hesitation.

This week was really full of highs and lows.  We had days where we had
miracle after miracle happen and then some days where we really had to
search for the tender mercies as we pushed through more difficult
times, but that is a blessing of this life that we get to experience
all of those changes.  I know that as we keep pushing and really
applying the atonement and the training that we get every week and
through PME we will have sucess and be happy.

This week in our training we have been studying a lot of the district
videos as directed and we have really been trying to apply the things
we have taken from them.  Elder Sutton has been taking a the lead more
and more as we are walking from appointment to appointment and also in
our daily planning sessions.  This has been helping him to really
learn the area better.

So this weekend we had our special stake conference with Elder Bednar
and it definatly lived up to the expectations. He is such an amazing
speaker. He taught about a lot of really important stuff.  one thing
that he did was about the conference talks and what we should do when
we get the ensign conference edition.  He said that we should go into
all of the talks from the 15 apostles and look for three things (this
is what he does and gave it as a suggestion for us)
1. what is the principle or docrine that is being highlighted or focused on.
2. What are we invited to do.
3. What are the promised blessings.
Then he takes this paper that has the answers to these questions for
all of the talks and puts it in his scriptures and studies it
frequently becuase it is what the Lord wants for us RIGHT NOW.

So I would like to extend the same invintation for you all to do this
with me and really enjoy the blessings of having modern revelation in
our lives through the guidence of living prophets.

He also taught about how we all need to keep studying the atonement
for forever becase there is really no other thing to move on from in
the gospel other then the atonement and Christ.  Also that there is a
lot more that we can all learn even though we will never really have a
full understanding of the eternal significance of the atonement.

There was a lot more about puting off the natural man and becoming a
saint and remembering that we are not doing this alone and it is not
meant to be done alone or without difficulties, but sometimes God
trusts us to learn things the hard ways. One of my favorite parts of
conference was that Elder Bednar let sister schill, who is a sister in
my district here that had her mother pass away during the last month,
went home for a week and came back then her mom passed away after she
had come back to portugal for about 4 days, (yeah she is a pretty
awesome and inspiring sister) know that they have her in their
prayers.  That really touched my heart and that along with everything
else that happened at that conference made me grateful and
strengthened my testimony of leaders called by God with the authourity
to lead and really serve the people. sister bednar taught about how
being a parent teaches you christlike attributes which I believe whole
heartedly.  So thank you Mom and Dad for having to deal with me to
become more christlike.

  It was an awesome conference all around and we even got to run into
people from our old areas. I talked to some members that I have missed
from Costa which was cool and made me really happy.

Today for pday we went as a district to Sintra all day.  It was soo
cool and we visited some really awesome things including caves tunnels
castles, and a giant well!  I have some pics but Elder and Sister
Broderick took quite a few and they have a blog for their mission that
you could problably see some of them on and some other interesting
stuff about thier expericnce in Alverca.  It is
castingournets.blogspot.net.

Anyways we are out here just enjoying the people and food and culture
but more then anything else the spirit and the blessings of the gospel
in out work.  It is a really wonderful esperience out here and is
going by really fast.  Today marks 8 months since I entered the MTC
and it is also the 200th day that I have had here in Portugal.  Even
though I love and miss you all a lot it is going by too fast!!  I love
you and hope that every day this week will be a blessing for you as
well.

Com Amor
Elder Hobson